The speech act of refusals has been studied widely either alone or in relation to such areas as apology, requests, promotion, and invitation. The present study aims to investigate the strategies employed by Iraqi females in refusing marriage proposals. It attempts to explore their preferences to respond directly or indirectly in relation to their ages and educational background of the parents. The sample of the study consists of 25 participants; they are learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the College of Education for Women/ University of Baghdad. The data are collected by using a discourse completion task (DCT) followed by a follow up interview. The researchers used a Google form shared via emails to get responses from the participants. The items of the completion task are mainly designed by the researchers after surveying the literature so as to have the situations in the final shape. Beebe’s et al. (1990) taxonomy is selected as the most comprehensive modal for the analysis of refusal strategies of the respondents. The results indicated that the Iraqi females tend to use more indirect strategies to refuse the marriage proposals. The most frequently used order of responses began with an apology followed by gratitude and then the reason for refusal, as a typical Iraqi way of expressing their refusal. Based on the fact that the study sample are EFLs, there were signs of pragmatic failure as some of the responses carry some negative transfer, thus, the researchers recommend that future studies have to focus on teaching the methods of refusing appropriately by incorporating the teaching of speech acts, including the speech act of refusals, with more details in their Bachelor Program.
SM ADAI, BN RASHID, Journal of Current Researches on Social Sciences, 2023
Iraqi EFL students face difficulties in writing composition, especially academic writing, which affects negatively their exam results. This study has been conducted in the Department of English at College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad, in order to identify first year EFL students’ incompetence in writing. This may enhance their achievement by some weekly writing activities. It deals with Iraqi EFL students’ difficulties in writing paragraphs such as descriptive, process, opinion, and factual paragraphs. The study aims to identify these difficulties and to suggest suitable solutions for them. The researcher perceives that it is necessary to enhance students’ skills in writing because it i
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YouTube is not just a platform that individuals share, upload, comment on videos; teachers and educators can utilize it to the best maximum so that students can have benefits. This study aims at investigating how active and influential YouTube can be in the educational process and how it is beneficial for language teachers to enhance the skills of students. The study demonstrates different theoretical frameworks that tackle the employment of technology to enhance the learning/teaching process. It relies on the strategies of Berk (2009) for using multimedia media, video clips in particular to develop the abilities of teachers for using technology in classrooms. To achieve the objective of the study, the researchers develop a questionnair
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Racism changes its meaning, shape, purpose or function according to various factors such as time, place, motives, and backgrounds; among others. It seems, however, to have deep roots back in the history of mankind. Such a concept stems from a perceived difference with the other. It is fed by the feeling of being hierarchically superior in opposition to another party that is depicted as inferior. Since ancient times, racism is disguised in different forms and manifests itself on various levels. It is a truism that this ideology can be best presented via language.
Due to its negative implication, racism lends itself to a critical kind of research. As such, this paper is a critical pragmatic investigation for this phenomenon a
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Narcissism is a complicated phenomenon that can be reflected in the narcissist’s language. Investigating narcissism in terms of linguistics, and pragmatics in particular, does not seem to have been given its due attention, as this study reveals. Thus, this study is an endeavor to discover how narcissism is reflected in the American movie Big Eyes (2014). It is known for introducing narcissistic behaviors. This paper aims to identify the types, motivations, and pragmatic manifestations of narcissism in the selected movie. Three pragmatic theories are chosen to scrutinize narcissism in the data: Searle’s speech acts (1969), Grice’s maxims breaching (1975), and Culppeper’s impoliteness (1996). To cope with the nature of the
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Even though in recent decades a bulk of studies have been accomplished on the use of communicative language teaching (CLT) in English as a foreign language (EFL) environments, fairly a limited numbers of studies precisely dealt with investigating the attitudes of language teachers, students and supervisors concerning the principals of CLT in the context of Iraq. Henceforth, this study was designed to delve into the attitudes of teachers, learners and supervisors about the implementation. To this end, the study was accomplished using a mixed method design. The present study was carried out in two phases: designing and using a questionnaire plus interviewing the teachers, students and supervisors (51 language learners, 41 teachers and
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There are a number of obstacles in the field of work of social workers that prevent them from performing their full role. Their tasks may sometimes be easy and manageable and at other times they may be difficult and complex, however professional roles are mostly the latter, contribute to the feeling of the inability to provide the work required at the level expected by others. In such cases, the relationship binding specialists to their work is affected negatively and this has devastating effects on the professional process as a whole, including their professional practice. This feeling of helplessness and depletion of energy and effort leads to a state of fatigue and emotional exhaustion that can be defined as job burnout, our study aims t
... Show MoreThis study examines postgraduate students’ awareness of pragmatic aspects, including Grice Maxims, Politeness, and Direct and Indirect forms of speech. According to Paul Grice’s theory of implicature, which is considered one of the most important contributions to pragmatics, this paper discusses how postgraduate students can meet the cooperative principle when communicating effectively. It also outlines how does politeness principles influence obeying or violating the maxims and how is the use of direct or indirect forms of utterances prompted by politeness. Sixteen master’s students of Linguistics and Literature were asked to take a multiple-choice test. The test will be represented along with the interpretation of each optio
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